There's No Fool Like an Old Fool: The New York Times Just Doesn't Get It When It Comes to the Student Loan Crisis

Today, the New York Times published an editorial on the Obama administration's efforts to encourage student-loan  servicers to be less rapacious.  According to the Times, the government is changing the incentive structures so that loan-collection companies have a financial incentive to help rehabilitate student loans that are delinquent instead of pushing borrowers into default.

The Times approves of reforms that will encourage students to sign up for Income-Based Repayment Plans, plans that will have borrowers paying a percentage of their income for the next 25 years. Some reform!  The Times also likes the new rule that will give more weight to customer satisfaction surveys "in determining how well servicers do their jobs."  That idea is about as radical as Aunt Sadie's Buick Regal.

The Times editorial then goes on to say that Obama's reform efforts don't go far enough. So what does the Times suggest? "More should be done to improve competition and transparency [among loan servicers]," the Times recommends.  Borrowers should be able to jump from one loan servicer to another, the Times adds, and "set significant penalties for poor practices and create a portal where borrowers can get information about their accounts and report abuses to the Education Department instead of to the abusers."

This is the kind of timid advice you would expect from a newspaper that gets a lot of its revenue from advertising luxury goods that are targeted at its fat cat readers. I'm glad the Times wasn't in charge of negotiating with Adolph Hitler during World War II. It probably would have editorialized that Hitler needed to paint the concentration-camp barracks a more soothing color.

The Times does not seem to realize that people who fall into the hands of the student-loan servicers are dealing with truly heartless entities.  Here are some examples:

•  Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) opposed bankruptcy relief for a 63-year old man who had been unemployed for 12 years, whose home was going into foreclosure, and who had been living with his wife below the poverty level.  This man had accumulated student-loan debt in the neighborhood of $240,000. Murphy v. Educational Credit Management Corporation (2014). 
•  ECMC opposed bankruptcy relief for an elderly student-loan defaulter who had chronic health problems and who was living solely on Social Security checks of less than $800 a month. Roth v. Educational Credit Management Corporation (2013). 
•  ECMC opposed bankruptcy relief for another elderly woman with student-loan debt that was more than twenty years old and who had a salary of about $500 per month and a history of homelessness. Stevenson v. Educational Credit Management Corporation (2011).

How much do ECMC executives pay themselves to chase down poor and elderly student-loan debtors? A lot. Bloomberg reported in 2012 that Richard Boyle, ECMC's Chief Executive at the time, made $1.1 million  in 2010. I could not find more recent compensation information on Educational Credit Management Corporation's new CEO, a guy named Dave Hawn, but I'll bet that Hawn is making at least as much as Boyle made four years ago.

So, New York Times editorialists, take your tepid and inadequate editorial recommendations and stick them "where the sun don't shine"--which is within your timid and obsequious little hearts.

You want to clean up the student-loan collection business? Here are some suggestions:

1) First, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should instruct all the student-loan servicers not to oppose bankruptcy relief for any elderly student-loan debtor who is living solely on Social Security, who has suffered long-term unemployment, or who has no real prospect of every paying off student-loan debt.  And they should follow up with regulations or legislation that would make those instructions stick.

2)  The government needs to put an upper-limit on fees and accrued interest that get tacked on to student-loan defaulters' total loan obligations.  Several bankruptcy decisions have documented that debtors' original student loan balances had more than doubled by the time they filed for bankruptcy due to accrued interest, penalties and fees.

3) The Obama administration should propose amendments to the bankruptcy laws that will allow distressed student-loan debtors who took out loans in good faith to discharge their student loans in the bankruptcy process without going through expensive and traumatic adversary proceedings.

4) Obama should propose legislation to reinstate a reasonable statute of limitation on the collection of delinquent student-loan debt--say six years, which is the same time period that applies to the collection of most monetary obligations.

5) The President should demand legislation that would stop the federal government from garnishing the Social Security checks of elderly student-loan defaulters who are totally dependent on their Social Security pensions.

6) All the companies participating in the student-loan servicing industry should be required to post the compensation of all its senior executives online so that Americans can see just how much money so-called non-profit agencies are making on the suffering of student-loan debtors.

All these recommendations are reasonable and all are more humane than the puny little recommendations the Times made in its editorial page.  If the Times can't offer any suggestions more robust than it offered in its September 8th issue, then it should keep its mouth shut about the student-loan crisis and admit that all it is really concerned about when it comes to domestic economic issues is supporting Barack Obama and maintaining Democratic control of the White House.

References

A Fairer Shot for Student Debtors. New York Times, September 8, 2014, p. A16. 

John Hechinger. Taxpayers Fund $454,000 Pay for Collector Chasing Student Loans. Bloomberg.com, May 15, 2013. Accessible at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-15/taxpayers-fund-454-000-pay-for-collector-chasing-student-loans.html

Brown, M., Haughwout, A., Lee, D., Mabutas, M., and van der Klaauw, W. (2012). Grading student loans. New York: Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Accessible at: http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2012/03/grading-student-loans.html

Krieger v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 713 F.3d 882 (7th Cir. 2013).

Lockhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 142, 126 S. Ct. 699 (2005).

Murphy v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 511 B.R. 1 (D. Mass. 2014).

Roth v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 490 B.R. 908 (9th Cir. BAP 2013).

Stevenson v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 463 B.R. 586 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2011). 

It's All About the Money: Louisiana State University, Coached by Fried Chicken Huckster Les Miles, Whipped Sam Houston State By a Score of 56-0

Louisiana State University's varsity football program brings big money to the local Baton Rouge economy.  The liquor store not far from my home opens at 6:00 AM on days when LSU plays at home: 6:00 AM! A Baton Rouge citizen who bought his bourbon at that hour yesterday had a solid 12 hours to drink before kickoff at 6:30 in the evening.  So the liquor business makes good money off of LSU football.

And the restaurants and hotels also make money when LSU plays at home. According to The Baton Rouge Advocate, room rates go up by an average of 34 percent on the weekends that LSU plays in Tiger Stadium. 

Other sectors of the Baton Rouge economy benefit as well.  LSU added 10,000 seats to its stadium last year at the cost of $80 million, making Tiger Stadium one of the largest college football coliseums in the country. It also added two high definition video screens that are so large that they can be seen from the Interstate 10 bridge over the Mississippi River. 

But the big money goes to the coaches and athletic administrators. Les Miles, LSU's head football coach, makes $4.3 million a year, about five times what LSU's president makes; and that doesn't include bonuses and and any product endorsement deals Miles might pick up.  His face has appeared on advertisements for Raising Cane, a regional fried chicken chain, and I'm sure Les didn't lend his mug for free.

Joe Alleva, LSU's Athletic Director, is another guy who makes a handsome salary. The Baton Rouge Advocate reported that Alleva has been offered a contract extension that calls for  a $725,000 yearly salary and includes incentive bonuses that could push his annual pay to $900,000.  He will get a $100,000 bonus if LSU ranks in the top 5 in the NACDA Directors' Cup rankings--whatever that means.  And Alleva will get an additional $25,000 if he maintains "financial solvency, no major infractions, [and makes] substantial contributions to [the] university and surrounding community" (as quoted in The Baton Rouge Advocate).  What nonsense.

Of course, university professors have groused about the salaries of football coaches for as long as I can remember, and it's been at least 30 years since football coaches first began making more money than university presidents.

In fact, almost everyone in higher education admits that varsity sports--and football in particular--is all about the money. Still, LSU's home field opener last night was a particularly disgusting spectacle. It has become traditional for the nation's top college football teams to open their seasons by playing weak opponents who are lured into the stadiums by getting a share of the gate. This year, Sam Houston State University obligingly volunteered to be the sacrificial lamb, and got trounced before a crowd of about 100,000 fans (not counting thousands of fans who tailgated on the LSU campus yesterday).

The Baton Rouge Advocate reported this massacre on the sports page in headlines so  big you would have thought Les Miles had defeated ISIS.

Some day, of course, all these enormous college football stadiums will stand empty, just as the old Roman coliseums now do. People will wonder just what it was that people saw in watching young men assault each other on a field of artificial turf, just as we wonder why the Romans enjoyed seeing Christians being devoured by lions.

But for now, as Robert Earl Keen put it, "the road goes on forever and the party never ends."The executive sky boxes are full of wealthy businessmen who watch football games while sipping bourbon, and rich donors make tax-deductible contributions to LSU's three foundations, which have annual revenues totalling $100 million.  Who cares that Louisiana's educational system is crumbling and that almost half of Louisiana's children who start first grade never graduate from high school. All that matters, as LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva phrased it,  is that LSU be "in the hunt" to win football championships.

References

Ross Dellenger. LSU proposes 3-year contract extension for Alleva. The Baton Rouge Advocate, September 7, 2014, p. 17C.

Scott Rabalais. Highlight Night. The Baton Rouge Advocate, September 7,2014, p. 1C.

Roar Of Approval. Baton Rouge Advocate, September 7, 2014 p. 1A.

Gary Laney. Les Miles Staying at LSU. ESPN, November 28, 2012.  Available at: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8687452/les-miles-remain-football-coach-lsu-tigers-receive-extension-raise

Memo to Parents: For God's Sake, Don't Borrow Money to Pay For Your Kids' College Education

Are you a parent who is thinking about taking out a loan to pay for your child's college education? Before you do, read Murphy v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, a recent federal court decision.

In 2002, Robert Murphy lived in Duxbury, Massachusetts and was the president of a corporation. Unfortunately, he lost his job after the corporation was sold and its operations were moved overseas. Although he had diligently looked for a new job, he was still unemployed in 2014.

Between 2001 and 2007 Murphy took out 12 loans to finance a college education for each of his three children. This is remarkable, since he was unemployed during most of this six-year period. Apparently, Murphy had no difficulty borrowing money for his children's education even though he was out of a job. By May 2014, when a federal court issued its appellate opinion on his bankruptcy case, Murphy owed more than $240,000 on these loans.

By this time, Murphy was 63 years old, unemployed for almost 12 years, and in dire financial circumstances. He owed $700,000 on a home that was only worth $500,000, and his home was going into foreclosure. Although Murphy had once owned an IRA worth about a quarter of million dollars, he had cashed it out  to cover expenses. The court did not report on Murphy's family income in 2014, but it noted that Murphy and his wife had only earned about $13,000 in both 2010 and 2011, money his wife had earned as a teacher's aide.

Pretty sad story, you might think.  Nevertheless, a federal court upheld a bankruptcy court's decision to deny Murphy's request to have his children's student loans discharged.  Although the court admitted that Murphy had no current ability to pay off the loans, it noted that Murphy was in good health and might still find a high-earning job that would allow him to pay off his enormous debt.

Ending its opinion on a remarkably callous note, the court observed that Murphy had struck a bargain with the government when he borrowed money to pay for his children's college education.  "All bargains contain risks," the court pointed out, and Murphy's bargain was especially risky since he had been unemployed during the time he took out most of the loans. 

In short, the court ruled, Murphy's situation did not present "truly exceptional circumstances" that would permit him to shed his student-loan debt.  Thus, the federal court agreed with the bankruptcy court's  decision to deny Murphy relief in bankruptcy for his children's student loans.

The Murphy decision serves as a warning to all parents who are thinking about borrowing money to help their children get a college education. Whether the parent takes out a federal student loan or borrows money from a private bank, a college loan cannot be discharged in bankruptcy unless the parent can show "undue hardship."

Mr. Murphy was unable to show undue hardship in spite of the fact that he had been unemployed for 12 years, had liquidated his retirement account and was in the process of losing his house in foreclosure.

According to a recent article in the Huffington Post, parents currently owe an accumulated $62 billion in Parent Plus Loans, which are guaranteed by the federal government. And this figure doesn't include loans parents took out with private banks that are not federally guaranteed.  A  2012 Huffington Post article reported that about one million Parent Plus loans were taken out during 2011, totally more than $10 billion in just that one year.

Parents who guarantee their children's college loans or who take out loans to pay for their children's education put their financial futures at grave risk.  Before borrowing to pay for your children to go to college, you should think about Mr. Murphy. Sixty-three years old, unemployed, and living on an income near the poverty level, Mr. Murphy is burdened by almost a quarter million dollars of student-loan debt.  That's a pretty scary story.

References

Murphy v. Educational Credit Management Corporation, 511 B.R. 1 (D. Mass. 2014).

Marian Wang,  Beckie Supiano, & Andrea Fuller. Parent Plus Loans: How the Government Is Saddling Parents With Loans They Can't Afford. Huffington Post, October 5, 2012. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/05/parent-plus-loan-government-parents-student-debt_n_1942151.html

Marian Wang. As Parents Struggle to Repay College Loans for Their Children, Taxpayers Also Stand to Lose. Huffington Post, April 4, 2014.  Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/parent-plus-loans_n_5094931.html

The Fed's Easy Redemption Plan for Student-Loan Borrowers in Default: Another Sign that the Federal Student Loan Program is a Train Wreck

All of us know people who appeared to radiate good health, but in reality they were terminally ill. Maybe we had a friend with clogged arteries but didn't know it. Perhaps a colleague had pancreatic cancer that hadn't been diagnosed.  These people went about their lives as if they would live forever and then the diagnosis came and shortly after they were dead.

This is exactly the situation the Federal Student Loan Program is in. All across America, colleges and universities, both public and private, depend on federal student aid money to pay the bills. Yes, the student-loan default rate has doubled in recent years; and yes, the average amount borrowed goes up every year. And yes, a high percentage of college graduates are unemployed or under-employed and thus are unable to pay back their loans.

But, hey, no big deal. Colleges will continue to raise their tuition on an annual basis, and the government will continue loaning more and more money. But someday--and soon--those little signs of sickness will become symptoms of a terminal disease; and the whole Federal Student Loan Program  will come crashing down.

And here's one of those little signs of trouble that portend the coming disaster. The New York Times reported recently that the Department of Education has made it easier for student-loan borrowers who defaulted on their loans to rehabilitate their loan status.  All they have to do is make payments based on a percentage of their income. Under the new rules, borrowers can bring their loans back into good standing if they pay 15 percent of their income after subtracting 150 percent of the federal poverty level.  Borrowers who are unemployed or who are working at or near the poverty level won't have to pay anything.   

According to the New York Times, this new rehabilitation policy is even available to debtors who have not been approved for Income-Based Repayment Plans (IBRPs). Pretty sweet deal, right?

What the New York Times article did not say is that interest will accrue on the loan balances of most people who make income-based payments because their monthly payments will not be enough to pay off accruing interest or pay down the principal of their loans. So for most people who choose the income-based option for rehabilitating their loans, the amount of money they owe will grow larger.

And, as the Times pointed out, people who make income-based payments who have not been placed in federally approved income-based repayment plans won't have the benefit of having their payments applied to the 20- or 25-year IBRP repayment plan terms.  In other words, people who make income-based payments who are not in IBRPs will fall into a kind of financial purgatory where they won't be considered defaulters but their loan balances will grow larger with each passing month.

I think it is interesting that the Times reporter who wrote about the new student-loan rehabilitation policy did not point out the pitfalls of the policy, probably because she wasn't aware of the policy's implications. Essentially, the federal government is postponing the day on which it will have to admit that millions of people are not making their student-loan payments or are making payments that are so low that their loan balances are actually growing.  Apparently, the Obama administration and Arne Duncan's Department of Education are hoping to skip town before this mess blows up.

But it is going to blow up. As I have said many times, the percentage of people who are actually paying off their loans is a lot lower than the federal government will admit. The true default rate--the percentage of people who will never pay back their loans--is at least double the rate that the government reports every autumn. 

In short, American higher education is much like France in 1940,  just before the Germans invaded. It is living in dream world that supposedly will last forever. But it won't last forever.  Eventually, this house of cards, which was constructed with federal student-aid money and which has been so profitable for the executives of the for-profit colleges, will come crashing down. And American higher education will be altered in ways we can't now imagine.

References

Ann Carrns. For Student Loan Borrowers in Default, Redemption Just Got Easier. New York Times, August 23, 2014, p. B6.

I seldom agree with the New York Times, but when I do, I like to drink a Dos Esquis: Felony charges against Texas Governor Rick Perry

I seldom agree with the New York Times, but when I do, I like to drink a Dos Esquis.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Dos Esquis in my refrigerator, so I popped the cap on an Abita Amber instead.

Recently Texas Governor Rick Perry was charged with two felonies after he vetoed appropriations for the Public Integrity Unit, the state office charged with investigating corruption by Texas public officials.  Perry issued the veto in order to get rid of Rosemary Lehmberg, the Travis County District Attorney who was also in charge of the Public Integrity Unit.  Ms. Lehmberg had been arrested for drunk driving and verbally abusing the arresting officers.  Tests showed that her alcohol level was three times the legal limit.  Lehmberg pled guilty and was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

Obviously,Ms. Lehmberg is not fit to run a Public Integrity Unit or to be a district attorney, where she had been responsible for prosecuting criminal offenses, including drunk driving.  But Lehmberg is a Democrat, and another Democrat rustled up criminal charges against Governor Perry, accusing him of abusing his office and coercing a public servant.

I seldom agree with the New York Times,
but when I do,I drink a Dos Esquis.

This is so outrageous that even the New York Times is objecting. As the Times said on today's Editorial Page,  Perry's veto  does not appear to rise to the level of a criminal act.  "Governors and presidents threaten vetoes and engage in horse-trading all the time to get what they want," the Times pointed out,  "but for that kind of political activity to become criminal requires far more evidence than has been revealed in the Perry case so far."

Of course the New York Times despises Governor Perry, and it couldn't resist the opportunity to label him as one of "most damaging state leaders in America."  It even accused him of "doing great harm to immigrants,"  which is absolutely untrue.

Although the New York Times may not realize it, Texas has, by and large, treated its undocumented immigrants with respect.  Without complaint, Texas educators have enrolled hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant children in the public schools.  For the most part, the Texas police departments in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and El Paso do not hassle undocumented immigrants and do not seek to determine the immigration status of people who are detained in routine traffic stops.

Texans--including Governor Perry--recognize that the state's immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are hard-working people for the most part who make positive contributions to the state's economy and its culture.  As far as I know, Governor Perry has resisted pressure from nativists and racists to persecute the undocumented immigrants of Texas.  The New York Times needs to get its facts straight. 

Nevertheless, I was happy to see the Times to speak out in opposition to the filing of criminal charges against Governor Perry. When the Times comes to Governor Perry's defense, we can be sure the charges are unfounded and were trumped up for political purposes.

In closing, I will also say this:  As a law student I was taught that it is an ethical violation for an attorney to threaten criminal charges to settle or advance a civil matter.  And as a practicing attorney, I never forgot this clear rule.  My client might have had both a good civil case and a criminal case against someone, but I was absolutely prohibited from threatening criminal charges in order to leverage my client's civil case.

Almost nothing an attorney can do is more despicable than using the criminal process for political purposes, which is what appears to have happened when felony charges were filed against Governor Perry. The rule of law depends for its integrity on the enforcement of a few basic ethical rules. In my mind, filing criminal charges against Governor Perry was unethical.  When this case is laid to rest, I predict that Governor Perry will be exonerated and that the people who filed these baseless criminal charges will be in trouble with the Texas Bar Association.

References

Editorial. Is Gov. Perry's Bad Judgment Really a Crime? New York Times, August 19, 2014.

Never Mind! Maybe we don't need to turn our local police departments into paramilitary tactical units

Remember Gilda Radner's "Never Mind!" routine on those long-ago Saturday Night Live skits? Gilda played the part of an elderly, irate woman who railed against public outrages as a guest editorialist on the nightly news. But she always got things mixed up. In every episode, Chevy Chase, playing the part of the news anchor, would patiently point out that she had gotten her facts wrong, Gilda would then smile benignly at the television audience and say, "Never Mind!"

Never mind about those armored personnel vehicles!

Maybe our nation has had a "Never Mind!" moment regarding an alarming trend taking place all over the United States.  Little by little, hundreds of local police departments--both large and small--have been transformed from community-focused law enforcement agencies into paramilitary units.  The men and women who used to wear caps and badges and carry .38 revolvers are now tricked out in military apparel with helmets, body armor, camouflage clothing and assault rifles.  Instead of driving Ford Crown Victorias, increasingly our police officers are tooling around in armored assault vehicles.

How did that happen?

As Elizabeth R. Beavers and Michael Shank explained in a New York Times essay, the federal government made that happen. The Defense Department has been pawning off surplus armored vehicles on local police departments, and the Department of Homeland Security (now there's a euphemism) has distributed $34 billion in "terrorism grants" to train and equip local police departments to join the war on terror.

In my own home town, the East Baton Rouge Parish Police Department proudly announced the acquisition of a 17-ton armored personnel carrier, which officials said could be used to serve warrants.  It cost the parish less than $20,000 to purchase the behemoth from the Defense Department, about the price of a Honda Civic.  One official was quoted as saying the deal was simply too good to turn down!  Apparently it had only been driven to church once a week by a little old lady in Iraq.

The recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri has called us to our senses, or it least the turmoil there forces us to examine the wisdom of transforming local police departments into paramilitary tactical units.  As everyone knows who has been following the news, Ferguson's African American population erupted in anger after a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, who apparently was a suspect in a petty robbery.  Rioting and looting broke out, and Ferguson's police department morphed almost instantaneously from a small-down law enforcement agency into a paramilitary unit complete with assault rifles, armored vehicles, and at least one sniper.

This was never a good idea, and I am sorry it took the shooting of Michael Brown to demonstrate the idiocy of this policy.   We should have woken up to this issue after the Boston Marathon bombing, when local police departments descended on Watertown Square with all sorts of paramilitary accouterments and reined gunfire down on a sleeping Boston suburb.  It is true that one police officer was wounded  in the exchange of bullets, but it was later determined that he was shot by "friendly fire" (another great euphemism), not by a terrorist.

I realize that the bad guys are better armed than they used to be, and I admit that terrorism needs to be taken very seriously. But does Ferguson, Missouri need an armored vehicle?

Personally, I think we would all be safer if we turned security over to Barney Fife, who only had one bullet for his revolver.  Let's bring back Barney's approach to law enforcement, although I am willing to upgrade his single bullet to one that will pierce armor.

Give this man an armor-piercing bullet!

References

Elizabeth R. Beavers and Michael Shank. Get the Military Off of Main Street. New York Times, August 15, 2014, p. A21.

For what cause would I send my own children or grandchildren to die overseas? Genocide in Iraq

As my small band of readers know, I have two blogs: a blog on Catholicism and culture and a blog on the federal student loan program. Occasionally, I comment on foreign affairs at both blog sites. Why do I do that?

Regarding my blog site on the federal student loan program, here is my explanation: The federal student loan program props up our nation's amoral, arrogant, and vapid higher education system; and it is this system that has educated our nation's political leaders who are now making disastrous foreign-policy decisions.

President Obama and almost all his cronies were educated at places like Harvard Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, etc., where they evidently learned no problem-solving skills or even the capacity to make foreign policy decisions based on our long-term national interests or fundamental principles of morality.

And you see where we are now: huge messes in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, sub-Saharan Africa, and Iraq. So I have commented from time to time that the global mess we are in has its roots in our elitist, arrogant universities.

As for my blog on Catholic culture, I comment on international affairs because my Catholic faith compels me to take stands on international affairs if moral principles are at stake. Servant of God Dorothy Day was a pacifist; she even opposed American involvement in World War II. I am not a pacifist; but I believe we should not send Americans to die or be maimed in order to defend unjust national interests.

Now to the subject of this blog. Ever since the United States abolished the draft, it has excused everyone from joining the military who choose not to do so. Since that time, it has been mostly young men and women from working-class and impoverished families who went to war. Barack Obama's children will never put on a uniform, and neither will the children of most of the people who serve in his administration or in Congress. I can almost guarantee you that no hedge fund manager or corporate CEO has a child who served in a combat role in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And--to be fair, I would not willingly see my own children or grandchildren fight in Afghanistan or Iraq. I am grateful that none of my family members have had to go to either place.

So for what cause would I send my own children or grandchildren to die overseas in a foreign war? To fight Hitler, obviously. That would have been an easy decision for me. But I would not have supported the firebombing of a civilian population as the U.S. and Britain did in Germany. Nor would I have supported the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki--even though my own father was in a Japanese prison camp when those bombs were dropped and the dropping of those bombs may have saved his life.

So here is my position. I believe the United States should calibrate its policy of military intervention around basic human rights and the rights of religious minorities and virtually nothing else. In the Middle East right now it is almost impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Is the Assad regime in Syria morally superior to the forces that oppose it? Who knows? Is the military regime that runs Egypt better than the Morsi government that the military overthrew? Again, who knows?

So I propose that the United States should take this stand: We will not go to war against any government that protects basic human rights and respects the rights of religious minorities. Thus if the Assad regime protects Christians in Syria, we would support it over ISIS. If the Military junta respects Egyptian Christians, then we would support it over the Islamic Brotherhood. And we would intervene to help nations facing outrageous atrocities against innocent civilians like the genocide in Rwanda and the kidnapping of more than 200 school girls in Nigeria by Muslim extremists.

Right now, ISIS is overrunning parts of Iraq and threatening Kurdistan. ISIS terrorists are committing genocide against religious minorities in the region--including Christians.

The Christians of the Middle East (and increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa) need American military help. With apologies to Dorothy Day, I think we should give it to them. Surely, if there is any emergency important enough to send a hedge fund manager's son to die in the Middle East it is the current crisis in Iraq. God help me--this emergency might even justify sacrifices from my own family.

Student Debt and Physical and Financial Well Being Among College Graduates--What Did the Gallup Poll Tell Us?

The media has commented widely on a recent poll conducted by Gallup and Purdue University that compared five elements of personal well-being between college graduates who did not take out student loans and those who did.  Not surprising, people who did not take out student loans to attend college are more likely to be thriving than people who borrowed.

The poll measured the percentage of people who considered themselves to be "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering" in five areas:

1) social ("having supportive relationships and love in your life")

2) sense of purpose ("liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals")

3) financial ("managing your economic life")

4) community ("liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride")

5) physical ("having good health and and enough energy to get things done daily")

The study found little difference between people regarding social well-being among people who took out student loans and those who didn't; but in two areas--financial well-being and physical well-being--there were stark differences.

Among people who graduated between 2000 and 2014 and took out no student loans, 38 percent reported to be thriving financially, compared to only 22 percent of the people who borrowed $50,000 or more. That's a a gap of 16 percentage points.

I'm broke, and I don't feel so good.

Among the same comparison group, 33 percent of the people who didn't borrow money to attend college reported that they were thriving in terms of their physical health and energy, while among the group who borrowed $50,000 or more, only 22 percent reported to be thriving. That's a gap of 11 percentage points.

The poll also studied people who graduated from college between 1990 and 1999.The discrepancy in well being was not as stark among people who graduated during the 1990s, but there were still significant differences.

A couple of points: First, this study only reported on people who graduated from college, not people who borrowed money to attend college but who didn't graduate.  How many people do you think are thriving who borrowed $50,000 to attend college but didn't get a degree?

I think the nation would be shocked to know how people are doing who borrowed money to attend for-profit colleges and didn't get degrees. A high percentage of these poor souls are from low-income families or are minorities.  How many are thriving now, do you think, in their physical and financial lives?

Second, as several commentators have pointed out, the Gallup study doesn't establish a relationship between student loans and diminished health and financial stability. It seems likely that people who borrowed a lot of money to attend college came from poorer homes and faced multiple challenges to getting ahead that students from wealthy families simply do not face. 

 Nevertheless, the recent Gallup polls adds to a growing body of research showing that people who borrow money to attend college suffer multiple handicaps.  They are less likely to be able to buy homes, start families, and save for their retirement, for example. And the Gallup study didn't tell us anything we didn't already know when it reported that people who borrowed a lot of money to attend college are not doing as well financially as the people who finished college with no debt.

But the Gallup finding that college graduates who borrowed $50,000 or more to attend college are less less likely to be thriving with regard to their physical health should give us pause.

But again, the really shocking story, I believe, is unfolding among the millions of young people--a high percentage of them being minority students from poor families--who loaded up on debt to attend for-profit colleges and didn't even get a degree or a credential.  If Americans knew that story, I think they would put great pressure on Congress to shut down the seedy for-profit college industry.

But maybe not. Perhaps as a people, Americans are indifferent to the scandal of the for-profit college industry--this seedy neighborhood of the higher education community that sucks up 25 percent of federal student aid money while destroying the lives of millions of young people.

References

Andrew Dugan and Stephanie Kafka. Student Debt Linked to Worse Health and Less Wealth. Gallup Well-Being, August 7, 2014.  Accessible at http://www.gallup.com/poll/174317/student-debt-linked-worse-health-less-wealth.aspx

Kelly Field. Is Student Debt Harmful to Your Health? A New Study Raises the Possibility. Chronicle of Higher Education, August 7, 2014.

Why Not Help Africa? American Universities Should Make a Civic Commitment to Strengthening Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Not long ago, the New York Times broke the scandal about New York University's new Abu Dhabi campus, which had been launched with much fanfare by NYU President John Sexton. According to the Times, construction workers for the Abu Dhabi campus, most of whom were migrants, were required to pay high fees just to get their jobs and forced to endure substandard living conditions.

NYU expressed regret for how the workers had been treated but suggested that it had no control over the contractor who hired the workers.  Later it was discovered that the owner of the construction firm that built NYU's Abu Dhabi campus sits on NYU's board of trustees!

John Sexton: Ain't life grand?

This unseemly incident illustrates how too many American universities involve themselves internationally.  For the most part, American higher education institutions confine their foreign initiatives to two activities: establishing overseas branches at exotic locations like Abu Dhabi or Shanghai or sponsoring Study Abroad experiences for American students, which are often little more than European travel adventures for both students and professors to places like Madrid and Rome.  I don't know how many students take out federal student loans to pay for their Study Abroad semesters, but I'll bet a lot of American students are funding their trips to the Great Wall with money they borrowed from Uncle Sam.

It is true of course that many American scholars make international contributions through such initiatives as the U.S. State Department's Fulbright Scholars program. But how many American professors have delivered papers at conferences in places like New Zealand, Hong Kong or Britain just to take brief foreign vacations at their universities' expense?

American university leaders like to boast that our nation's universities are the envy of the world, but if that is true, doesn't that impose a civic obligation on our universities to help make the world a better place?  And if that is true, why haven't American colleges and universities made more of a contribution to strengthening higher education and building the economies in the world's developing countries--particularly sub-Saharan Africa?

Sub-Saharan Africa

Right now sub-Saharan Africa is destabilizing. Boko Haram has captured school girls in Nigeria and burned children alive in a boarding-school dormitory. Kenya has suffered several recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists including an attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi. Uganda and Tanzania have been relatively free of terrorism in recent years, but a Catholic church was bombed in the Tanzanian town of Arusha in 2013 and people I talked with in Uganda think it is only a matter of time before Uganda experiences the same kind of terrorism that Kenya has begun to suffer.

East African universities are making a heroic effort to expand higher education opportunities for East Africa's young people. In particular, East African universities affiliated with religious denominations are growing and offering new programs designed to lead to good jobs for their graduates and to building stronger national economies.

But they are severely under resourced. They lack experienced faculty members, technology infrastructures, and adequate physical facilities. Often they lack higher-education management expertise.

Meanwhile, American universities have excess capacity. We have too many law programs, too many MBA programs, and too many colleges of education for the current demand. Why don't American universities offer some of their programs and some of their skills and expertise to aid African higher education?

If American universities would make a selfless contribution to strengthening higher education in sub-Saharan Africa, they would help strengthen the economies of the countries in that region and would help raise education levels of the young people of sub-Saharan Africa.  They would be helping to bring prosperity to a region wracked by poverty and crippled by centuries of colonial exploitation. They would be helping to foster the values on which western higher education is founded--values dedicated to the search for truth and justice and equality among all the peoples of mankind.

And by strengthening higher education in Africa, American universities would help stabilize a region that is rapidly destabilizing.  They would be directly refuting the philosophy of nihilistic terrorism that has begun to infect sub-Saharan Africa.

But perhaps helping Africa is too difficult for American universities.  Far easier to engage in self-indulgent Study Abroad programs and egotistical campuses in places like Abu Dhabi.  And far more comfortable. And far safer.

References

Adamu Adamu, Michelle Faul. 29 boarding school students burned alive, shot dead by Islamists militants in Nigeria. NBCNews.com. July 6, 2013.

Jon Lee Anderson. Letter from Timbuktu: State of Terror. New Yorker, July 1, 2013, pp. 37-47.

Clinton Lauds N.Y.U. Graduates, and Inquiry, in Speech. New York Times, May 25, 2014.

Ariel Kaminer. N.Y.U. Apologizes to Any Workers Mistreated on Its Abu Dhabi Campus. New York Times, May 20, 2014, p A16.

Ariel Kaminer. N.Y.U. Impeding Compensation Inquiry, Senator Says. New York Times, July 10,2013. Accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/nyregion/nyu-accused-of-impeding-compensation-inquiry.html?_r=0

Tamar Lewin. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad, New York Times, February 10, 2008. Accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/education/10global.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Andrew Ross Sorkin. N.Y.U. Crisis in Abu Dhabi Stretches to Wall Street. New York Times, May 26, 2014.

Tosin Sulaiman. Insight--Africa makes the grade for richest U.S. university investors. Reuters, July 7, 2013. Accessible at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/08/africa-endowments-idUSL5N0FB2IZ20130708

Like the Crocodile, American Higher Education is Eating Its Young: Reflections While In Africa

I just returned from Uganda, where I visited several Ugandan universities and toured a game preserve on the upper Nile River. As I viewed the wildlife of Africa--the elephants, the baboons, the giraffes--I was deeply impressed by how fiercely most African species protect their young.

Cape buffalo: Don't mess with my family

I was particularly struck by the cape buffaloes, which are quite effective in protecting their calves from predators. When they sense trouble, the adults instinctively form a circle around their young ones; and acting together, they can even fend off lions.According to my guide, lions do not even try to attack a herd of cape buffalo unless they are in a large group because they know the buffaloes will rough them up.

At least one African species, however, does not protect its young--the crocodile. A guide told me crocodiles will protect their eggs, but after baby crocs are hatched, their mothers show no interest in them. In fact, crocodiles are cannibals; the bigger crocodiles will sometimes eat the small ones.

As I received this information, I could not help but draw a comparison between the crocodiles and American higher education. At one time, we Americans believed our colleges would nurture the young, transmit and preserve our cultural heritage, and prepare our young people for adult life and the world of work. In other words, Americans once considered their colleges to be something like cape buffaloes, which would do all they could to make sure their young grew up to be healthy adults.

I'm not sure Americans believe that anymore. In fact, American higher education today looks much more like a crocodile than a cape buffalo. Every year, the cost of higher education goes up a bit more, requiring students to borrow more and more money in order to attend college. Our college presidents and administrators have become overpaid, arrogant bureaucrats more intent on wooing wealthy donors and constructing impressive buildings than on serving their students.

Crocodile: Come a little closer and I promise you'll have a good educational experience

In particular, the for-profit college industry has exploited low-income and minority students by using high-pressure recruiting tactics to enroll them in expensive programs that frequently do not lead to well-paying jobs. Students who attend for-profit institutions have the highest default rates on student loans, loans which they cannot discharge in bankruptcy.

In short, with each passing year, American higher education--and the for-profit college industry in particular--becomes more and more like the crocodiles, which eat their young, than the cape buffaloes, which nurture and protect them.

And everyone knows this. Indeed, not long ago, President Obama said the for-profit colleges were "making out like a bandit," and his administration has admirably tried to bring them under tighter regulatory control.

But you can't regulate crocodiles; you have to stay away from them. As long as we permit the for-profit college industry to feast off of federal student-aid money, we will have corruption and exploitation. The sooner we face this cold fact, the sooner we will realize that this industry must be shut down.

Of course, as I have just said, the public universities and the non-profit colleges have serious problems as well; but compared to the for-profit colleges, the publics and non-profits are more like alligators than crocodiles. And according to the Ugandans, in comparison to a crocodile, an alligator is merely a Presbyterian.

Not With a Bang But With a Whimper: For-Profit Corinthian Colleges May Close Some Campuses

Yesterday's New York Times carried a story in its Business Section about Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit company that operates under the names of Heald, Everest and WyoTech.  Corinthian has 72,000 students on more than 100 campuses.

Recently, Corinthian announced that it did have enough operating cash to stay in business after the end of this month, and it persuaded the federal government to release some federal student aid money in spite of the fact that it admitted fraud in the reporting of student grades and job placements.  Corinthian has also been sued by the California Attorney General based on allegations that it used high-pressure tactics to recruit vulnerable students--including single mothers.

Like most for-profit colleges, Corinthian relies on the federal student aid program to stay in business. It gets about 90 percent of its revenue from the federal government--about $1.4 billion a year.  DOE's emergency cash infusion (about $16 million, according to the New York Times) may be enough to stave off closing for awhile at least. But that might not be a good thing for students.

As the Times article stated:

If, as critics contend, many Corinthian students are going deeper into debt to gain useless educations, some of those students might have been better off is the Education Department had stuck to its guns and forced Corinthian to close. Federal student loan rules do not require students to repay loans that were canceled while they were enrolled, leaving them unable to graduate.

In most instances, we should not be happy to see a college close, but the for-profit industry is a special case. As Senator Tom Harkin's Committee outlined in its report on for-profit colleges, this sector of higher education only educates about 11 percent of postsecondary students but collects about 25 percent of federal student aid money.  The for-profits have the highest student-loan default rate in the higher education industry; according to DOE, one in five for-profit college students default within three years of beginning repayment. 

And there is ample evidence that for-profit colleges have exploited low-income individuals, encouraging them to take out loans to pay for programs that don't lead to well-paying jobs.  Even if they believe they have been defrauded, these students often have no recourse to the courts, because many of the for-profits require students to sign agreements to arbitrate disputes rather than sue.

Indeed, the Ninth Circuit ruled last year that Corinthian students were compelled to arbitrate their misrepresentation claims against Corinthian--claims that were brought under California's unfair competition law, false advertising law, and California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act. 

To its credit, the Obama administration has been trying to impose regulations on the for-profits, but it suffered a setback in the courts when the for-profits were successful in getting some of the Department of Education's regulations thrown out.  Recently, DOE issued a second set of proposed regulations, but these new regulations will probably just lead to more litigation.

So we should not be sorry to see Corinthian Colleges close--if that event comes to pass. In fact, we should hope this whole unseemly industry collapses.  So far,  the federal government has not been successful in effectively regulating the for-profit college industry.  But perhaps students will gradually wake up to the fact that they would probably be better off enrolling in low-cost community colleges, where they might not need to take out student loans, than to matriculate at high-cost for-profit institutions that have a very poor track record regarding job placement, degree completion, and student-loan defaults.


References

Ferguson v. Corinthian Colleges, 733 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2013).

Floyd Norris. A For-Profit College Falters as Federal Cash Wanes. New York Times, June 27, 2014.

U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success. 112 Congress, 2d Session, July 30, 2012.

The Student Debt Crisis? What Student Debt Crisis? The Brookings Institution Issues A Report Stating That The Problem of Student Debt Has Been Exaggerated

The Brookings Institutopn issued a report a few days ago suggesting that worries about a looming student-loan crisis may not be justified.  The report, entitled "Is a Student Loan Crisis on the Horizon?,"  makes these major points:

• Roughly a quarter of the increase in overall student debt can be attributed to the fact that more people are obtaining graduate degrees.
• Increases in average lifetime earnings have more than kept up with increasing student-debt loads.
• Average monthly student-loan payments have stayed the same or gone down a bit, due in part to longer loan-repayment periods.

In short, the Brookings Institution concludes: "[T]ypical borrowers are no worse off now than they were a generation ago."

The Brookings Report was widely reported in the media, including newspaper pieces in the New York Times and Slate.  The Times quoted one of the Brookings authors as saying, "The evidence does not support the notion that student loan debt is dragging down the economy." The Times article also pointed out that more than half of student-loan debtors owe less than $10,000; and more than three quarters of borrowers owe less than $20,000.

Without quarreling with any of the Brookings report's findings, I will just point out a few indicators that show a much less rosy picture:

First, as several newspaper articles have recently pointed, about one in five college graduates under the age of 35 now live with their parents--a percentage that has grown in recent years. Undoubtedly, student-loan debt is partially responsible for the growing number of college-educated young people who still live with Mom and Dad.

Second, the student-loan default rate is going up, more than doubling over the course of just a few years.  According to the Department of Education's most recent report (issued in October 2013), about 15 percent of student-loan borrowers default within three years of beginning the repayment phase of their loans. For students who attended for-profit institutions, the rate is about 21 percent.

And, as I have pointed out, for-profit colleges have been successful in hiding their default rates by encouraging their former students to sign up for economic hardship deferments that keep borrowers from being counted as defaulters even though they are not making their student-loan payments.

In fact, according to a recent report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we now have about 7 million people who have defaulted on their loans and another 15 million borrowers in the repayment phase who have obtained some sort of deferment that allow them not to make payments.

It is true, that millions of people owe only modest amounts on their student loans, and millions of college-loan borrowers are managing to make their monthly loan payments without difficulty.

But to say that monthly payments have not gone up overall because more people are taking 20 or 25 years to pay off their loans instead of 10 years is somewhat disingenuous.  People who are forced into long-term repayment plans because they can't afford to pay off their loans over 10 years will be paying a lot more in interest on their loans and many of them will not be making payments large enough to cover accumulated interest. 

Furthermore, even if most people are not burdened by their college loans, those 7 million defaulters have suffered a financial catastrophe.  Their credit ratings have been ruined, they are subject to wage garnishments, and they are saddled with debt that most of them cannot discharge in bankruptcy.  For these people--the student loan program has been a disaster.

In short, I think the Brookings Institution is wrong to suggest that a student loan crisis is not on the horizon.  On the contrary, the crisis is already here.

References

Beth Akers & Matthew M. Chingos. Is a Student Loan Crisis on the Horizon? Brookings Institution, June 2014. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2014/06/24%20student%20loan%20crisis%20akers%20chingos/is%20a%20student%20loan%20crisis%20on%20the%20horizon.pdf

David Leonhardt. The Reality of Student Debt is Different From the Cliches. New York Times, June 24, 2014. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/upshot/the-reality-of-student-debt-is-different-from-the-cliches.html?_r=0

Jordan Weissmann. Are We Overreacting to Student Debt? Slate, June 24, 2014. Available at: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/brookings_institution_student_debt_crisis_have_we_all_overreacted.html

Nonsense from Adam Davidson in the New York Times Magazine About the Wisdom of Young Adults Living With Their Parents

Adam Davidson wrote an essay in the Magazine section of the New York Times about young adults who still live with their parents. The percentage of young people who live with Mom an and Dad has been going up--the figure is now 20 percent.  And--according to Davidson-- about 60 percent receive some financial assistance from their parents, much higher than in the past.

Davidson cites Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychologist at Clark University, who coined the phrase "emerging adulthood." According to Arnett, the trend of young people moving back home with their parents is a "rational response to a radically different, confusing postindustrial economy."

For people who graduated from college with a high level of debt and no clear notion of their ultimate vocational goal, it makes sense to move back home with Mom and Dad until they figure things out; at least that's Arnett's reasoning. Davidson cites Arnett saying that "it's the people most actively involved in the struggle, the ones who at times seem totally lost, who are most likely to find their way."

Arnett also cites statistics showing that young people are remarkably optimistic.  According to a poll he conducted, 77 percent of young people still believe they will be better off than their parents!  Thus, in spite of a poor economy, a shortage of good jobs, and (for many) crushing student-loan debt, a lot of young people think things will eventually work out.

Personally, I think this line of reasoning is a lot of horse patootie (a phrase I borrowed from blogger Kathy Schiffer). Adam Davidson and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett can afford to be sanguine about the nation's economic malaise because they have good jobs.  Davidson is writing for the Times and Arnett is a professor and probably tenured.

But young people with college degrees who are forced to live with their parents due to poor job prospects and high levels of student-loan debt are in a scary position. They can't marry, have children, buy a home, or start their careers; in a very real sense they are merely trying to stay afloat financially--they are in survival mode.

I would have liked Davidson's article a lot more if it had displayed a spark of anger about a national economy that is eating the nation's young and about a rapacious higher-education industry that is impoverishing millions of young people with student-loan debt without giving them the skills they need to get well-paying jobs.

And I would have liked the article a lot more if Davidson had had some suggestions for reforming the nation's financial policies and the federal student loan program so that fewer people in their 20s have to live with their parents.  In short--the Davidson article is a puff piece published by a newspaper that pretends to care about people's suffering but is firmly dedicated to the economic status quo. After all, some body's got to buy those expensive watches that the Times Magazine advertises week after week.

References

Adam Davidson. "Hi, Mom. I'm Home!" New York Times Magazine, June 21, 2014, Magazine section, p. 22.

Senators Lamar Alexander and Michel Bennet Propose a Simpler FAFSA form: What a Good Idea!

"Everything should be made as simple as possible," Albert Einstein observed, "but not simpler."  And indeed, simplicity, is a great virtue.  How many of us have struggled with a problem we thought was complicated, only to have an "ah ha" moment when we realized our problem was not as complicated as we first believed.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Senator Lamar and Senator Bennet Have A Good Idea for Streamlining Federal Student Aid Applications

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado have struck a blow for simplicity in the federal student aid program, a program that is entirely too complicated.   As they explained in an op ed essay in the New York Times earlier this week, the two senators have introduced a bill to reduce the complexity of the standardized federal student aid form, which every college student must fill out to qualify for federal student aid.

Currently, this form, commonly called the FAFSA form, has 108  questions and is 10 pages long. With its attached instructions, the entire form is 82 pages long!

Senators Lamar and Bennet propose to throw this form out, which is so complicated and time-consuming that many students simply forgo applying for federal student aid. 

They want to substitute a form that only has two questions:  What is your family size? What was your household income two years ago?

Senators Lamar and Bennet's proposed legislation would also reduce the number of federal student loan programs to three: one program for undergraduates, another for graduate students, and a third for parents who borrow money to pay for their children's college education .  And, perhaps most importantly, they propose just two repayment options: the standard 10-year repayment plan and an income-based repayment plan.  

Lamar and Bennet's op ed essay did not provide any details about what their income-based repayment plan would look like.  Would it be a variation of President Obama's Pay As You Earn plan, requiring borrowers to pay 10 percent of their discretionary income over 20 years or would it would be a less generous variation?  But the simplicity of having a single income-based repayment plan will reduce the confusion many college-loan borrowers experience when they try to convert their 10-year repayment plans to long-term income-basde repayment plans.

Senators Lamar and Bennet acknowledged the input they got for their reform proposals from Susan Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton. Ms. Dynarski is co-author of a provocative Brookings Institution study that recommends payroll deductions as the most efficient way for students to make their loan payments if they are enrolled in income-based repayment plans. (I discussed this proposal in my last blog posting.)

Efficiency-Driven Reforms Are Good But Radical Reforms of the Federal Student Loan Program Are Necessary
Senator Lamar and Senator Bennet have made sensible proposals for improving the way the Federal Student Loan Program Operates. And Susan Dynarski and the Brookings Institution have also made reasonable proposals for collecting student-loan payments from borrowers who participate in income-based repayment programs.  

Without a doubt, these proposals will help make the federal student aid program operate more efficiently. But they won't help bring the federal student loan program under control.  These proposals do nothing to stop the runaway cost of higher education. They do nothing to address the abuses in the for-profit college industry, and they do nothing the ease the strain on millions of student-loan debtors who are already in default. 

We won't be getting serious about addressing the student loan crisis until we amend the bankruptcy laws to allow worthy college-loan debtors to obtain bankruptcy relief, publicize the real student-loan default rate, and rein in the for-profit colleges.  Unless we do these things, other reform proposals will do nothing more than put a band-aid on a gaping wound. 

References

Lamar Alexaner & Michael Bennet. An Answer on a Postcard. New York Times, June 19, 2014, p.  A25.

If You Have a Student Loan, You Should Read Susan Dynarski's Proposal for Having Student Loan Payments Automatically Deducted From Debtors' Pay Checks

Susan Dynarski

If you took out a federal student loan to attend college, you should read Susan Dynarski's op ed essay in last Sunday's New York Times entitled "Finding Shock Absorbers for Student Debt."  Ms. Dynarski explains why two proposals for assisting overburdened student-loan debtors will not be very effective.  And she makes her own proposal for deducting borrowers' monthly student-loan payments directly from borrowers' pay checks.

Reducing Interest Rates on College Loans Won't Give Borrowers Much Relief

Recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation to significantly lower  interest rates on student loans, legislation that President Obama supported. Warren's bill would have covered the cost of lower interest rates by raising taxes on the wealthy. Not surprisingly, Republicans opposed the bill, and it did not get enough votes to move forward.

Ms. Dynarski points out that even a large cut to student-loan interest rates won't have much impact on individual students' monthly loan payments.  Borrowers with $30,000 in student loans (which is the average amount that college graduates owe when they finish their studies) would only see a $44 reduction in their monthly loan payments  if the interest rate on their loans was reduced from 6.5 percent to 3.5 percent--which  is a big reduction.

Thus the recent hype about Senator Elizabeth's failed attempt to pass legislation to reduce interest rate on student loans is a tempest in a teapot.  Even if Senator Warren's bill had bee adopted into law, it would not have given the mass of student-loan debtors much relief.

President Obama's Pay As You Earn Plan Is Too Cumbersome to Give Borrowers Much Relief

Dynarski also pointed out that the President Obama's Pay As You Earn program, whereby students make student-loan payments based on a percentage of their income, is so cumbersome that a high percentage of borrowers haven't applied for it even though they are behind on their loans or in default. One problem with Pay As You Earn is that the program does not respond quickly enough to borrowers who lose their jobs. A student-loan borrower's monthly loan payments are based on the borrower's previous year's income, so a borrower who is thrown out of work in mid-year would have to wait many months before seeing a reduction in the size of  monthly loan payments.

Dynarksi and the Brookings Institution Propose Automatic Student-Loan Payroll Deductions

Dynarksi proposes an automatic income-based loan repayment program, whereby employers would simply deduct the appropriate college-loan payment from borrowers' paychecks just like they make deductions for federal income tax, Social Security contributions and health insurance.  The borrower's monthly payment would fluctuate as income goes or up or down; and a borrower who is unemployed would pay nothing during the period of unemployment.

Dynarski's plan is a little more complicated than I've explained but not much.  The proposal is set out in detail in a paper released recently by the Brookings Institution, which recommended that an automatic income-based repayment program be the default option for students who take out federal student loans.

Dynarksi's automatic income-based loan repayment plan has many attractive features. First of all, if fully implemented, it would completely eliminate all student-loan defaults.  Any student-loan borrower who is employed would see a payroll deduction for student loans on every paycheck.

Second, an automatic paycheck deduction plan would virtually eliminate the need for loan collection agencies.  The IRS (or perhaps the Department of Education) would in essence by a giant federal student-loan collection agency.

Long-Term Automatic Payroll Deductions for College-Loan Borrowers Is a Sharecropper Plan

What's the downside?

As I've said before, income-based student-loan repayment plans  do nothing to stop the spiraling cost of higher education. Putting millions of students on income-based repayment plans might actually reduce the incentive for colleges an universities to get their costs under control.

Second, and far more ominously, in my opinion, putting students on long-term income-based repayment plans, whereby college-loan payments are automatically deducted from borrowers' paychecks over a period of 20 or 25 years, essentially transforms all young people who borrow money to attend college into a class of sharecroppers who fork over a percentage of their income over the majority of their working lives simply for the privilege of getting a college education.

And this is why I don't like the Dynarski/Brookings Institution proposal.  But my best guess is that something like what Dynarksi and the Brookings Institution have proposed will eventually become the default option for most people who pursue postsecondary education.


References

Susan Dynarski. Finding Shock Absorbers for Student Debt. New York Times, June 15, 2014, Sunday Review Section, p. 8.

Why Humiliate Yourself To Get into an Ivy League College? The Search for a Richer Life

Years ago I had a professor at the University of Texas who hung his college diploma in the guest bathroom of his home--right above the toilet.  As I recall he was a Harvard graduate.

I remember being offended by the gesture, intended I suppose to be ironic. If I had the opportunity to go to Harvard or any Ivy League university, I told myself, I would hang my diploma in a place of honor.

Years later I obtained a doctorate degree from Harvard, one of the stupidest things I ever did. For years I hung my diploma in my office, but today it hangs in a back hallway of my home.  I didn't put my Harvard diploma in an obscure place to be ironic.  I just came to realize how meaningless my Harvard degree really is.

Yesterday, Frank Bruni had an op ed piece in the New York Times about people humiliating themselves in their college admissions essays in order to stand out and perhaps improve their chances of being accepted at an elite college.  One young woman, Bruni wrote, confessed in her essay that she had once urinated on herself rather than interrupt an intellectually stimulating conversation with a teacher. Another young man revealed his disappointment with size of his genitals. Other students enroll in college-application camps, which can cost up to $14,000, where they are taught how to polish their college admissions essays to make them more appealing to Ivy League admissions officers.

Why do young people turn themselves inside out to get into an elite American university--Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke, Columbia, etc. I suppose they believe that these institutions hold the key that unlocks the golden door. If only I can get a degree from Harvard, these people tell themselves, I will have a richer life.

But I think many people who hanker to go to an elite college will be disappointed if they actually enroll. For the most part, these institutions are intellectually vapid, surreptitiously  racist, and pathetically provincial in their outlook on the world. They are openly contemptuous of American culture and traditional American values.  The people who run these cesspools of privilege think they embrace diverse philosophies and points of view, yet they harass traditional Christian student groups.  The professors and administrators of these intellectual ghettos think they are guardians of truth and beauty, yet they scorn the very notion that there are universal truths. Indeed, a great many people who inhabit our elitist universities seek nothing more from life than money, power, and public recognition.

If only I could get into Harvard!

Moreover, our elite institutions are not producing people who can analyze and solve problems, as evidenced by the way the Obama administration is running the country. Almost everyone connected withe the present  administration in Washington has a degree from an elite British or American university, and yet it is evident to nearly everyone that these folks do not know what they are doing.

And of course, all these prestigious colleges and universities are outrageously expensive. It will cost you around sixty grand a year to hang out with a bunch of nincompoops.

I was ruminating on Bruni's essay yesterday morning when I walked into my parish church to attend Mass. I saw four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity sitting in the back of the church--sisters of Mother Teresa's order. They are quite distinctive in their white veils with the blue stripes--veils that always remind me of my grandmother's tea towels.

As I looked at these nuns I realized that there is a great gulf between a humiliating life and a life lived in humility. Some people are willing to humiliate themselves in order to get into Harvard or Yale. Others are humble enough to give their lives to God.

And I wondered, as I turned to genuflect before the tabernacle, who has the richer life--the people who dedicate their lives to God or the people who get a degree from Harvard?

References

Frank Bruni. Naked Confessions of the College Bound. New York Times, June 15, 2015, Sunday Review Section, p. 3.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' College Rating System: President Obama's Plan to Rate Colleges on Value Faces Congressional Opposition

President Obama is determined to impose some sort of college rating system on the nation's higher education institutions, even though the higher education community opposes it. And President Obama is also getting blow back from Congress.

Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Democrat Representative Michael Capuano of Massachusetts introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives opposing Obama's college rating proposal. The resolution states in part:

[T]he Administration's proposal to rate postsecondary institutions through an oversimplified Federal rating system that is not supported by postsecondary institutions, statute, or by the House of Representatives, will lead to less choice, diversity, and innovation, and should be rejected. 

Senator Lamar Alexander has also stated his opposition to the college-rating plan in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Senator Alexander expressed skepticism that the Department of Education can come up with a reliable and workable rating plan.

I don't know whether Representatives Goodlatte and Capuano are right to conclude that a college-rating system will lead to less diversity and fewer choices in higher education.  But I do think the plan will have no beneficial impact on the spiraling cost of attending college and will add yet another level of bureaucracy to universities that are already bloated with too many administrators.

Don't form a committee on snakes.
Photo credit: NBC News

In my mind, the Department of Education's focus on a college-rating system is a diversion from the urgent task of reforming the federal student loan program.  As Ross Perot once observed, if you see a snake, kill it. Don't form a committee on snakes.

My prediction is this:  President Obama's college-rating proposal is going nowhere.

References

Michael Stratford. Obama defends college rating system amid growing backlash from Capitol Hill. Inside Higher Ed, June 11, 2014.

House Resolution Strongly supporting the quality and value of diversity and innovation in the Nation's higher education institutions and strongly disagreeing with the President's proposal to create and administer a Postsecondary Institution Rating System. [Introduced by Reps. Goodlatte and Capuano on June 10, 2014]